In healthcare information systems diagnosis information of a patient is typically entered into a Hospital Information System (HIS) and sent to a pharmacy information system at the time of admission. The diagnosis information includes suspected and known diagnoses. In known systems the diagnosis information is typically entered and stored at a patient level, i.e., in association with a patient account and is inconsistently updated in an HIS during a patient visit as one or more diagnoses are excluded, changed or refined. The diagnosis information in an HIS system may be entered as free-text and comprise DRG (Diagnostic Resource Group) information and diagnosis codes that are completed by a Medical Records Department, for example, after patient discharge to complete a medical record and be used to initiate reimbursement claim processing. Further, pharmacy information systems allowing entry of a Reason-for-Use in association with a medication order typically use free-text or table defined diagnoses. These are not standardized diagnosis codes such as ICD-9 or Snomed codes.
Known systems cannot comprehensively identify drugs that are used for specific diagnoses if patient level diagnoses are not updated or final diagnoses do not include suspected problems that have been excluded. Therefore, known systems may only be able to identify selected drugs and may not be able to identify drugs that have “Off Label” or multiple indications. Further, known systems lose utilization data if a Reason-for-Use is not updated or revised as diagnoses are changed or excluded and these systems provide no access to real-time utilization data via association with Reason-for-use or diagnosis. Also in known systems, diagnoses that are entered after discharge may contain a prevalence of codes for which reimbursement is favorable, and few codes for cases with poor payment. A system according to invention principles addresses these deficiencies and related problems.